In Quadrun, perhaps the rarest Atari VCS game of them all, players fend off a hail of attackers within a plus-shaped arena while also trying to rescue escaping "Runts" before they slam blindly into a high-voltage barrier at the sides of the screen. The player is also firepower-challenged in this game, carrying only three projectiles, each of which must be retrieved before it leaves the screen. Running out of ammo or allowing too many enemies, who become increasingly craftier, to escape the arena unharmed ends the game. It's a bizarre hand-eye coordination challenge that is tricky to learn, and becomes overwhelmingly difficult as players advance through the levels.
Quadrun is exceedingly rare because it never received wide distribution; for the most part, it was available by mail order only through Atari's fan club. It's also one of the only Atari VCS titles to feature speech synthesis without any additional hardware. While Atari had already pulled this trick with Atari 5200 titles like Baseball, it was quite a feat with the VCS's limited memory and audio capability. But even so, the speech in Quadrun is minimal: an emotionless male voice quickly intones "Quadrun, quadrun, quadrun" before each wave. Despite that, it was a surprising reminder that Atari's designers were still capable of making the old machine do some new tricks.